On Friday 07. November we had tried to sail from Porto Santo to Madeira but 2nm after we had left the harbour the wind died and it did not look as if it would pick up again during the day. So the girls took the chance to take a swim and we tried out an 33 year old automatic life jacket. Maria put it on and jumped into the water. And surprisingly after ca. 10 seconds it started to blow itself up. I was very surprised that it still worked after being not serviced for many years and looking quite rotten. Julia and Maria swam an hour next to the boat back to Porto Santo where we joined the other boats in the anchor field.
But the next morning, Saturday 8. November, the wind was fair and from north east which meant a downwind course. We left the anchorage at the same time as Mike and Asa on Seahawk, the Dutch boat Pacific had left a little earlier and the American catamaran Makara had been the very first to start.
So we started with Seahawk by sunshine and under spinaker. We were considerably quicker and were even able to catch up with Pacific because they had not put up their full sail area, otherwise we would have had no chance with them being twice as long as us. We were doing well over 6knots, sometimes even 7.
After we got out of the swell protection of the island Porto Santo the wind increased, it started to shower occasionally and the speed went in the surf to over 8 knots. Time to get the spinaker down. I had just said to Julia and Maria that this is getting to dangerous when with a big bang the windward sheet of the spinaker broke. So I went to the foredeck and pulled the cover over the spinaker and it was almost in. I then saw that the sheet apparently broke exactly within the knot because there was no piece of rope on the sail left. Now I know how much the 8mm ropes hold.
We carried on just under the mainsail because we were not really slower than with the spinaker. When later the wind decrease we rolled out the genoa and put the sails in butterfly position.
Meanwhile Pacific had overtaken us so we just could follow them without staring at the compass all the time. When we approached the north-east tip of Madeira with its light house we also saw Makara coming from the south east but they took a little detour to a natural arch in the cliffs.
After rounding the corner we tacked up the coast for 2,5nm to the anchorage in the Baia de Ariba. Pacific had arrived literally a few minutes earlier and it took them two attempts to find a spot where their anchor holds. We luckily found at the first attempt a spot that had a very good holding ground.
But the weather was not the very best. Strong gusts of wind made a howling wind in the rigging and the occasional showers of drizzling rain continued.
Soon after us Makara arrived and then also Seahawk sailed into the bay. She managed to sail all the way to her anchor spot.
In this bay we finally managed to hollow our pumpkin we had originally bought for Halloween a week earlier and it gave us a delicious Pumpkin soup.

Later we went over to the American Catamaran Makara and had a little party evening with our hollow pumpkin and a freshly backed chocolate cake. Unfortunately Mikes dinghi had flipped over and the outboard enginge had gotten wet. He tried to fix it immediatly with my tools but in the dark with only a head lamp on and a wind shaken boat it was too difficult. So he left it until the morning, being grumpy at the beginning of the evening. But then with sun light and calmer conditions in the cockpit of his boat, he got it back running after a short while.

Here are pictures of that day: Porto Santo to Madeira

After we had changed from Seixal to the marina Doca dos Nacoes at the former Expo area of the Expo 1998 we once again changed to the marina Doca de Alcantara where I had asked a technician to come onboard to check the SSB. But all he did was to tune in to a normal short wave radion station to show me that the SSB was receiving a signal. To his opinion everything was alright. He did not even connect the simplest measuring device to check the strength of the transmission signal. He had not understood that I had a general problem with the thing and that I actually wanted the whole system systematically checked whether everything is alright. But he gave all the impression that he was absolutely not interested in repairing an SSB. He regarded it as old fashioned and dead technology. He said that the Portuguese Coastal Radion Stations had stopped to operate SSB services because the commercial ships now all have satellite phones and hardly anybody of them is using it any more. So from his point of view it was pointless to have one.
Ok, at least he did not charge anything for telling me that.
That had been one of the reasons to stay in the Doca de Alcantara, the other was that we thought it was more central. By geography it is but effectively it is not much closer to the interesting Barrio Alto and central Lisbon districts than the Doca dos Nacoes, instead indeed noisier from the big bridge and the neighbouring container terminal. The advantage of the Doca dos Nacoes is that it is really quiet, they have the nicer showers and a proper office building with a nice sitting area.
So there were no more reasons to stay there and we changed to Cascais, at the mouth of the Tejo where Mike was at anchor and where we wanted to wait for the right wind to go to Porto Santo. In Cascais we met several other long term sailors almost all on their way to the Canary Islands. The weather fore cast said that there was a good weather window when leaving on Thursday 30. October or on Saturday 1 November with the latter one seeming to be the better one because one would have northerly winds from the beginning.
The challenge of this passage is that you need the right wind for 3 to 5 day because it is a distance of 465 nm to Porto Santo. Almost all boats decided to go on Saturday with the disadvantage that for Monday Night a strong wind band of up to 30 knots (Bft.7) was forecasted. But with the good winds on Saturday and Sunday one should be ahead of it.
So Mike already started a 7 am, we started at 12:00 pm and others started at around 3pm.
At first we had even to point south, but once we got off the coast we could directly 225° to Porto Santo. We decided not to go a bit more west first hoping for the forecast to be right that the wind would change to north which would have given us a nice downwind course. We said „No“, the direct course is the quickest because one never knows how correct the forecast is“.
We had a beam reach (Halbwind) course on the first day and a force 4-5 Bft in the night so we had only the mainsail up because we had to fix something on the Genoa sheet (Genuaschot) which we had only noticed at sunset. So we had to leave it till the next morning. But even with that small sail we did 5 to 5.5 knots. And we had a sailing yacht directly in front of us all through the night. The distance did not change, which was very strange because usually boats do not travel at the same speed.
But at night fall we all started to get seasick. Even me threw up (sich übergeben) and nobody was interested in the good food or even the pumpkin we had bought. But everybody managed to do his / her watch. We were doing 6 knots on the average so we had already covered 150 nm until Sunday noon, which is a third of the distance. But unfortunately Julia and Maria did not get over their seasickness a were bound to their bunks (Kojen) occasionally trying to eat and drink something which sometimes stayed in the stomach, sometimes came out a bit later. So Asa and me were sharing the watches which worked actually quite well because thanks to Peter Förthmanns Windpilot the watch keeper did not have much to do besides taking a look around every ten minutes. Usually there was nothing although I have to admit that at least during the first half of the journey there were several ships, probably on their way to the Strait of Gibraltar. And also during the second night we had sailing yacht all the time some miles either in front of us, behind or net to us.
With a little bit reefed sails also the Monday was ok.
But on Tuesday morning we were hit be the strong wind band. The boat was sometimes falling from a wave and banging heavily into the wave valley and one time I thought we had hit something solid swimming in the water when a wave hit us directly from the side. All the time we spray coming over, also sometimes flying all the way to the cockpit. But at 10 am a lot of water flew into the cockpit, filling the holds in the sides of the cockpit (Schwalbennester) where apparently were some wholes through which I got wet in my bunk under the cockpit. And simultaneously Asa shouted „Jan, Jan, I need your help here“. So I jumped into my foul weather gear (Ölzeug) and went on deck. It was clear that reefing the sails would ease the situation. So I bound the third reef into the main sail and furled in the jib down to storm sail size. With that sail area we were still doing 6,5 knots but the boat moved much smoother and we had almost not heavy water coming over any more. So I could go back to my bunk, to get some more rest until I had to release Asa on watch. From that point we had still another 60nm to go which at the speed meant we would reach Porto Santo around 9pm. The visibility was excellent, the temperature around 20°C so only the chaotic waves were the problem. But with only 12hours left the end was getting closer.

Under storm sails

Tired and exhausted after three days with little sleep

And so at 10pm we rounded the Ilheu de Cima Light House on the north eastern corner of Porto Santo and were finally in calm waters as the island protected us from the ocean swell. From there it was only another 2 miles to the port. Although the marina in the port was badly lit we found a berth.
At 11 pm we were readily moored (waren mit Anlegen fertig). But the usual mooring beer did not yet really taste, at least my stomach was still to accepting beer, but the sausages Asa had managed to fry underway despite the rocky movements of the boat tasted quite good.
The next morning after sleeping in (ausschlafen) we rinsed the whole boat, insideand outside, the fould weather gear and dried the wet sleeping bags, towels and polsters.
Mike who we had tried to contact under way via VHF radio (UKW-Funkgerät) had also arrived during the night so we mutually happy to see that had arrived sound and safe. Ilko, the dutch skipper of a big ketch, had arrive earlier but had to keep the watch for 72 hours because his whole family crew had been seasick And then we were waiting for the sailing yacht called Gegenwind. They arrived a day later because they had heaved to because the were hit by even Bft. 10 in gusts (in Böen) as they said. So eventually everybody had arrived well although we had gotten our good dose of strong wind.
The more happy we were to have beautiful weather on Porto Santo, perfect for a barbecue on the beach. So in the evening of Thursay we were about 20 people from Scotland, USA, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and England around the barbecue. One of the American crews had caught a Mahimahi fish which was so big they were eating on it since a week and still had loads of it share with us as it had to be eaten because otherwise it would go bad.
Due to the weather conditions not many pictures were taken, I only managed to take a few, but I made little video (in German): On the Atlantic Ocean between Portugal and Porto Santo